AUDREY COMES TO WESTOVER
It was ten of the clock upon this same night when Hugon left the glebe
house. Audrey, crouching in the dark beside her window, heard him bid
the minister, as drunk as himself, good-night, and watched him go
unsteadily down the path that led to the road. Once he paused, and made
as if to return; then went on to his lair at the crossroads ordinary.
Again Audrey waited,--this time by the door. Darden stumbled upstairs
to bed. Mistress Deborah’s voice was raised in shrill reproach, and the
drunken minister answered her with oaths. The small house rang with
their quarrel, but Audrey listened with indifference; not trembling and
stopping her ears, as once she would have done. It was over at last,
and the place sunk in silence; but still the girl waited and listened,
standing close to the door. At last, as it was drawing toward midnight,
she put her hand upon the latch, and, raising it very softly, slipped
outside. Heavy breathing came from the room where slept her guardians;
it went evenly on while she crept downstairs and unbarred the outer
door. Sure and silent and light of touch, she passed like a spirit from
the house that had given her shelter, nor once looked back upon it.
The boat, hidden in the reeds, was her destination; she loosed it, and
taking the oars rowed down the creek. When she came to the garden wall,
she bent her head and shut her eyes; but when she had left the creek
for the great dim river, she looked at Fair View house as she rowed
past it on her way to the mountains. No light to-night; the hour was
late, and he was asleep, and that was well.
It was cold upon the river, and sere leaves, loosening their hold upon
that which had given them life, drifted down upon her as she rowed
beneath arching trees. When she left the dark bank for the unshadowed
stream, the wind struck her brow and the glittering stars perplexed
her. There were so many of them. When one shot, she knew that a soul
had left the earth. Another fell, and another,--it must be a good night
for dying. She ceased to row, and, leaning over, dipped her hand and
arm into the black water. The movement brought the gunwale of the boat
even with the flood.... Say that one leaned over a little farther ...
there would fall another star. God gathered the stars in his hand, but
he would surely be angry with one that came before it was called, and
the star would sink past him into a night forever dreadful.... The
water was cold and deep and black. Great fish throve in it, and below
was a bed of ooze and mud....
The girl awoke from her dream of self-murder with a cry of terror.
Not the river, good Lord, not the river! Not death, but life! With a
second shuddering cry she lifted hand and arm from the water, and with
frantic haste dried them upon the skirt of her dress. There had been
none to hear her. Upon the midnight river, between the dim forests that
ever spoke, but never listened, she was utterly alone. She took the
oars again, and went on her way up the river, rowing swiftly, for the
mountains were far away, and she might be pursued.
When she drew near to Jamestown she shot far out into the river,
because men might be astir in the boats about the town landing.
Anchored in midstream was a great ship,--a man-of-war, bristling with
guns. Her boat touched its shadow, and the lookout called to her. She
bent her head, put forth her strength, and left the black hull behind
her. There was another ship to pass, a slaver that had come in the
evening before, and would land its cargo at sunrise. The stench that
arose from it was intolerable, and, as the girl passed, a corpse,
heavily weighted, was thrown into the water. Audrey went swiftly by,
and the river lay clean before her. The stars paled and the dawn came,
but she could not see the shores for the thick white mist. A spectral
boat, with a sail like a gray moth’s wing, slipped past her. The shadow
at the helm was whistling for the wind, and the sound came strange and
shrill through the filmy, ashen morning. The mist began to lift. A
few moments now, and the river would lie dazzlingly bare between the
red and yellow forests. She turned her boat shorewards, and presently
forced it beneath the bronze-leafed, drooping boughs of a sycamore.
Here she left the boat, tying it to the tree, and hoping that it was
well hidden. The great fear at her heart was that, when she was missed,
Hugon would undertake to follow and to find her. He had the skill to do
so. Perhaps, after many days, when she was in sight of the mountains,
she might turn her head and, in that lonely land, see him coming toward
her.
The sun was shining, and the woods were gay above her head and gay
beneath her feet. When the wind blew, the colored leaves went before
it like flights of birds. She was hungry, and as she walked she ate a
piece of bread taken from the glebe-house larder. It was her plan to
go rapidly through the settled country, keeping as far as possible to
the great spaces of woodland which the axe had left untouched; sleeping
in such dark and hidden hollows as she could find; begging food only
when she must, and then from poor folk who would not stay her or be
overcurious about her business. As she went on, the houses, she knew,
would be farther and farther apart; the time would soon arrive when
she might walk half a day and see never a clearing in the deep woods.
Then the hills would rise about her, and far, far off she might see the
mountains, fixed, cloudlike, serene, and still, beyond the miles of
rustling forest. There would be no more great houses, built for ladies
and gentlemen, but here and there, at far distances, rude cabins, dwelt
in by kind and simple folk. At such a home, when the mountains had
taken on a deeper blue, when the streams were narrow and the level land
only a memory, she would pause, would ask if she might stay. What work
was wanted she would do. Perhaps there would be children, or a young
girl like Molly, or a kind woman like Mistress Stagg; and perhaps,
after a long, long while, it would grow to seem to her like that other
cabin.
These were her rose-colored visions. At other times a terror took her
by the shoulders, holding her until her face whitened and her eyes grew
wide and dark. The way was long and the leaves were falling fast, and
she thought that it might be true that in this world into which she had
awakened there was for her no home. The cold would come, and she might
have no bread, and for all her wandering find none to take her in. In
those forests of the west the wolves ran in packs, and the Indians
burned and wasted. Some bitter night-time she would die.... Watching
the sky from Fair View windows, perhaps he might idly mark a falling
star.
All that day she walked, keeping as far as was possible to the woods,
but forced now and again to traverse open fields and long stretches of
sunny road. If she saw any one coming, she hid in the roadside bushes,
or, if that could not be done, walked steadily onward, with her head
bent and her heart beating fast. It must have been a day for minding
one’s own business, for none stayed or questioned her. Her dinner she
begged from some children whom she found in a wood gathering nuts.
Supper she had none. When night fell, she was glad to lay herself down
upon a bed of leaves that she had raked together; but she slept little,
for the wind moaned in the half-clad branches, and she could not cease
from counting the stars that shot. In the morning, numbed and cold, she
went slowly on until she came to a wayside house. Quaker folk lived
there; and they asked her no question, but with kind words gave her
of what they had, and let her rest and grow warm in the sunshine upon
their doorstep. She thanked them with shy grace, but presently, when
they were not looking, rose and went her way. Upon the second day she
kept to the road. It was loss of time wandering in the woods, skirting
thicket and marsh, forced ever and again to return to the beaten track.
She thought, also, that she must be safe, so far was she now from Fair
View. How could they guess that she was gone to the mountains?
About midday, two men on horseback looked at her in passing. One spoke
to the other, and turning their horses they put after and overtook
her. He who had spoken touched her with the butt of his whip. “Ecod!”
he exclaimed. “It’s the lass we saw run for a guinea last May Day at
Jamestown! Why so far from home, light o’ heels?”
A wild leap of her heart, a singing in her ears, and Audrey clutched at
safety.
“I be Joan, the smith’s daughter,” she said stolidly. “I niver ran for
a guinea. I niver saw a guinea. I be going an errand for feyther.”
“Ecod, then!” said the other man. “You’re on a wrong scent. ’Twas no
dolt that ran that day!”
The man who had touched her laughed. “’Facks, you are right, Tom! But
I’d ha’ sworn ’t was that brown girl. Go your ways on your errand for
’feyther’!” As he spoke, being of an amorous turn, he stooped from his
saddle and kissed her. Audrey, since she was at that time not Audrey at
all, but Joan, the smith’s daughter, took the salute as stolidly as she
had spoken. The two men rode away, and the second said to the first: “A
Williamsburgh man told me that the girl who won the guinea could speak
and look like a born lady. Didn’t ye hear the story of how she went to
the Governor’s ball, all tricked out, dancing, and making people think
she was some fine dame from Maryland maybe? And the next day she was
scored in church before all the town. I don’t know as they put a white
sheet on her, but they say ’t was no more than her deserts.”
Audrey, left standing in the sunny road, retook her own countenance,
rubbed her cheek where the man’s lips had touched it, and trembled
like a leaf. She was frightened, both at the encounter and because she
could make herself so like Joan,--Joan who lived near the crossroads
ordinary, and who had been whipped at the Court House.
Late that afternoon she came upon two or three rude dwellings clustered
about a mill. A knot of men, the miller in the midst, stood and gazed
at the mill-stream. They wore an angry look; and Audrey passed them
hastily by. At the farthest house she paused to beg a piece of bread;
but the woman who came to the door frowned and roughly bade her begone,
and a child threw a stone at her. “One witch is enough to take the
bread out of poor folks’ mouths!” cried the woman. “Be off, or I’ll set
the dogs on ye!” The children ran after her as she hastened from the
inhospitable neighborhood. “’T is a young witch,” they cried, “going to
help the old one swim to-night!” and a stone struck her, bruising her
shoulder.
She began to run, and, fleet of foot as she was, soon distanced her
tormentors. When she slackened pace it was sunset, and she was faint
with hunger and desperately weary. From the road a bypath led to a
small clearing in a wood, with a slender spiral of smoke showing
between the trees. Audrey went that way, and came upon a crazy cabin
whose door and window were fast closed. In the unkempt garden rose an
apple-tree, with the red apples shriveling upon its boughs, and from
the broken gate a line of cedars, black and ragged, ran down to a piece
of water, here ghastly pale, there streaked like the sky above with
angry crimson. The place was very still, and the air felt cold. When no
answer came to her first knocking, Audrey beat upon the door; for she
was suddenly afraid of the road behind her, and of the doleful woods
and the coming night.
The window shutter creaked ever so slightly, and some one looked out;
then the door opened, and a very old and wrinkled woman, with lines of
cunning about her mouth, laid her hand upon the girl’s arm. “Who be
ye?” she whispered. “Did ye bring warning? I don’t say, mind ye, that
I can’t make a stream go dry,--maybe I can and maybe I can’t,--but I
didn’t put a word on the one yonder.” She threw up her arms with a
wailing cry. “But they won’t believe what a poor old soul says! Are
they in an evil temper, honey?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Audrey. “I have come a long way, and
I am hungry and tired. Give me a piece of bread, and let me stay with
you to-night.”
The old woman moved aside, and the girl, entering a room that was mean
and poor enough, sat down upon a stool beside the fire. “If ye came by
the mill,” demanded her hostess, with a suspicious eye, “why did ye not
stop there for bite and sup?”
“The men were all talking together,” answered Audrey wearily. “They
looked so angry that I was afraid of them. I did stop at one house;
but the woman bade me begone, and the children threw stones at me and
called me a witch.”
The crone stooped and stirred the fire; then from a cupboard brought
forth bread and a little red wine, and set them before the girl. “They
called you a witch, did they?” she mumbled as she went to and fro. “And
the men were talking and planning together?”
Audrey ate the bread and drank the wine; then, because she was so
tired, leaned her head against the table and fell half asleep. When she
roused herself, it was to find her withered hostess standing over her
with a sly and toothless smile. “I’ve been thinking,” she whispered,
“that since you’re here to mind the house, I’ll just step out to a
neighbor’s about some business I have in hand. You can stay by the
fire, honey, and be warm and comfortable. Maybe I’ll not come back
to-night.”
Going to the window, she dropped a heavy bar across the shutter. “Ye’ll
put the chain across the door when I’m out,” she commanded. “There be
evil-disposed folk may want to win in.” Coming back to the girl, she
laid a skinny hand upon her arm. Whether with palsy or with fright the
hand shook like a leaf, but Audrey, half asleep again, noticed little
beyond the fact that the fire warmed her, and that here at last was
rest. “If there should come a knocking and a calling, honey,” whispered
the witch, “don’t ye answer to it or unbar the door. Ye’ll save time
for me that way. But if they win in, tell them I went to the northward.”
Audrey looked at her with glazed, uncomprehending eyes, while the
gnome-like figure appeared to grow smaller, to melt out of the doorway.
It was a minute or more before the wayfarer thus left alone in the
hut could remember that she had been told to bar the door. Then her
instinct of obedience sent her to the threshold. Dusk was falling, and
the waters of the pool lay pale and still beyond the ebony cedars.
Through the twilit landscape moved the crone who had housed her for the
night; but she went not to the north, but southwards toward the river.
Presently the dusk swallowed her up, and Audrey was left with the
ragged garden and the broken fence and the tiny firelit hut. Reentering
the room, she fastened the door, as she had been told to do, and then
went back to the hearth. The fire blazed and the shadows danced; it was
far better than last night, out in the cold, lying upon dead leaves,
watching the falling stars. Here it was warm, warm as June in a walled
garden; the fire was red like the roses ... the roses that had thorns
to bring heart’s blood.
Audrey fell fast asleep; and while she was asleep and the night was
yet young, the miller whose mill stream had run dry, the keeper of a
tippling house whose custom had dwindled, the ferryman whose child had
peaked and pined and died, came with a score of men to reckon with
the witch who had done the mischief. Finding door and window fast
shut, they knocked, softly at first, then loudly and with threats. One
watched the chimney, to see that the witch did not ride forth that way;
and the father of the child wished to gather brush, pile it against the
entrance, and set all afire. The miller, who was a man of strength,
ended the matter by breaking in the door. They knew that the witch was
there, because they had heard her moving about, and, when the door
gave, a cry of affright. When, however, they had laid hands upon her,
and dragged her out under the stars, into the light of the torches they
carried, they found that the witch, who, as was well known, could slip
her shape as a snake slips its skin, was no longer old and bowed, but
straight and young.
“Let me go!” cried Audrey. “How dare you hold me! I never harmed one of
you. I am a poor girl come from a long way off”--
“Ay, a long way!” exclaimed the ferryman. “More leagues, I’ll warrant,
than there are miles in Virginia! We’ll see if ye can swim home, ye
witch!”
“I’m no witch!” cried the girl again. “I never harmed you. Let me go!”
One of the torchbearers gave ground a little. “She do look mortal
young. But where be the witch, then?”
Audrey strove to shake herself free. “The old woman left me alone in
the house. She went to--to the northward.”
“She lies!” cried the ferryman, addressing himself to the angry throng.
The torches, flaming in the night wind, gave forth a streaming,
uncertain, and bewildering light; to the excited imaginations of the
rustic avengers, the form in the midst of them was not always that of a
young girl, but now and again wavered toward the semblance of the hag
who had wrought them evil. “Before the child died he talked forever of
somebody young and fair that came and stood by him when he slept. We
thought ’t was his dead mother, but now--now I see who ’t was!” Seizing
the girl by the wrists, he burst with her through the crowd. “Let the
water touch her, she’ll turn witch again!”
The excited throng, blinded by its own imagination, took up the cry.
The girl’s voice was drowned; she set her lips, and strove dumbly with
her captors; but they swept her through the weed-grown garden and
broken gate, past the cedars that were so ragged and black, down to the
cold and deep water. She thought of the night upon the river and of
the falling stars, and with a sudden, piercing cry struggled fiercely
to escape. The bank was steep; hands pushed her forward: she felt the
ghastly embrace of the water, and saw, ere the flood closed over her
upturned face, the cold and quiet stars.
So loud was the ringing in her ears that she heard no access of voices
upon the bank, and knew not that a fresh commotion had arisen. She was
sinking for the third time, and her mind had begun to wander in the
Fair View garden, when an arm caught and held her up. She was borne
to the shore; there were men on horseback; some one with a clear,
authoritative voice was now berating, now good-humoredly arguing with,
her late judges.
The man who had sprung to save her held her up to arms that reached
down from the bank above; another moment and she felt the earth again
beneath her feet, but could only think that, with half the dying past,
these strangers had been cruel to bring her back. Her rescuer shook
himself like a great dog. “I’ve saved the witch alive,” he panted. “May
God forgive and your Honor reward me!”
“Nay, worthy constable, you must look to Sathanas for reward!” cried
the gentleman who had been haranguing the miller and his company. These
gentry, hardly convinced, but not prepared to debate the matter with
a justice of the peace and a great man of those parts, began to slip
away. The torchbearers, probably averse to holding a light to their own
countenances, had flung the torches into the water, and now, heavily
shadowed by the cedars, the place was in deep darkness. Presently there
were left to berate only the miller and the ferryman, and at last these
also went sullenly away without having troubled to mention the witch’s
late transformation from age to youth.
“Where is the rescued fair one?” continued the gentleman who, for his
own pleasure, had led the conservers of law and order. “Produce the
sibyl, honest Dogberry! Faith, if the lady be not an ingrate, you’ve
henceforth a friend at court!”
“My name is Saunders,--Dick Saunders, your Honor,” quoth the constable.
“For the witch, she lies quiet on the ground beneath the cedar yonder.”
“She won’t speak!” cried another. “She just lies there trembling, with
her face in her hands.”
“But she said, ‘O Christ!’ when we took her from the water,” put in a
third.
“She was nigh drowned,” ended the constable. “And I’m a-tremble myself,
the water was that cold. Wauns! I wish I were in the chimney corner at
the Court House ordinary!”
The master of Westover flung his riding cloak to one of the constable’s
men. “Wrap it around the shivering iniquity on the ground yonder; and
you, Tom Hope, that brought warning of what your neighbors would do,
mount and take the witch behind you. Master Constable, you will lodge
Hecate in the gaol to-night, and in the morning bring her up to the
great house. We would inquire why a lady so accomplished that she
can dry a mill stream to plague a miller cannot drain a pool to save
herself from drowning!”
At a crossing of the ways, shortly before Court House, gaol, and
ordinary were reached, the adventurous Colonel gave a good-night to the
constable and his company, and, with a negro servant at his heels, rode
gayly on beneath the stars to his house at Westover. Hardy, alert, in
love with living, he was well amused by the night’s proceedings. The
incident should figure in his next letter to Orrery or to his cousin
Taylor.
It figured largely in the table-talk next morning, when the sprightly
gentleman sat at breakfast with his daughter and his second wife, a
fair and youthful kinswoman of Martha and Teresa Blount. The gentleman,
launched upon the subject of witchcraft, handled it with equal wit and
learning. The ladies thought that the water must have been very cold,
and trusted that the old dame was properly grateful, and would, after
such a lesson, leave her evil practices. As they were rising from
table, word was brought to the master that constable and witch were
outside.
The Colonel kissed his wife, promised his daughter to be merciful, and,
humming a song, went through the hall to the open house door and the
broad, three-sided steps of stone. The constable was awaiting him.
“Here be mysteries, your Honor! As I serve the King, ’t weren’t Goody
Price for whom I ruined my new frieze, but a slip of a girl!” He waved
his hand. “Will your Honor please to look?”
Audrey sat in the sunshine upon the stone steps with her head bowed
upon her arms. The morning that was so bright was not bright for her;
she thought that life had used her but unkindly. A great tree, growing
close to the house, sent leaves of dull gold adrift, and they lay at
her feet and upon the skirt of her dress. The constable spoke to her:
“Now, mistress, here’s a gentleman as stands for the King and the law.
Look up!”
A white hand was laid upon the Colonel’s arm. “I came to make sure
that you were not harsh with the poor creature,” said Evelyn’s pitying
voice. “There is so much misery. Where is she? Ah!”
To gain at last his prisoner’s attention, the constable struck her
lightly across the shoulders with his cane. “Get up!” he cried
impatiently. “Get up and make your curtsy! Ecod, I wish I’d left you in
Hunter’s Pond!”
Audrey rose, and turned her face, not to the justice of the peace
and arbiter of the fate of witches, but to Evelyn, standing above
her,--Evelyn, slighter, paler, than she had been at Williamsburgh, but
beautiful in her colored, fragrant silks and the air that was hers of
sweet and mournful distinction. Now she cried out sharply, while “That
girl again!” swore the Colonel, beneath his breath.
Audrey did as she had been told, and made her curtsy. Then, while
father and daughter stared at her, the gentleman very red and biting
his lip, the lady marble in her loveliness, she tried to speak, to
ask them to let her go, but found no words. The face of Evelyn, at
whom alone she looked, wavered into distance, gazing at her coldly and
mournfully from miles away. She made a faint gesture of weariness and
despair; then sank down at Evelyn’s feet, and lay there in a swoon.